A client recently talked about a big life change that was upon him. "I'm afraid of it," he said. When I asked him why he replied that it was because it was a challenge and a big unknown for him. "Okay," I replied, "It's a challenge and an unknown, but why are you choosing to attach fear to it? Why not just accept it as a challenge and an opportunity for growth?" His face broke into a grin, "Now that's worth thinking about," he replied.
Nobody intentionally goes out in search for problems, but they do seem to crop up from time to time. But the truth is there really aren't any problems in life, there are just experiences. It's how we think about the experience that determines whether it's a problem for us, or not. Problems exist only in our mind.
Most people dislike the discomfort that challenges bring. In fact we spend our whole lives trying to build a problem-free life. We build walls in our psyche based on bad experiences to ensure that if a similar situation arises again the thoughts and emotions we experience as a result don't happen again. And it works, at least for a while, until it doesn't. When, as invariably happens, something else comes up to challenge the reality we created for ourselves we resist it and try to push it away to avoid those feelings of discomfort. That's when a life event becomes a problem because that which we resist persists.Â
It's the resistance that's the real issue, not the event. What that tells us is that the version of reality we have built for ourselves, based on memories and emotions of past events we wish to block ourselves from, is in fact no longer serving us. Try as we might we can't keep building the walls in our psyche to avoid the discomfort and truly live a happy, fulfilling life. The reality we build to make life comfortable is a false comfort that will be challenged again and again disrupting our internal state and as a result our happiness which will continually elude us.
It's when we learn to lean into the discomfort and see it as an opportunity to grow and move to the next level that we reduce its power to affect us, and that's true happiness, fulfillment and success can begin to assert itself. To do that we need to take the risk of breaking down the walls we have built when these opportunities to do so present themselves. The willingness to endure that discomfort is where growth happens and once we do that anything is possible.